Redemption
by Liu Yue
Summary: The burden on our shoulders weighs as man spin in the vortex of time, not lightens. And this burden, which expands as time passes by, will not only make a man a coward, but also let the adoration stronger. AU;FrUK;oneshot.


What would one consider resurrection and reunion? Most of us regard it as a redemption from time, the greatest tribute of Three Sages, which is quite ridiculous, after all. Time has always been a hypocrite, hoodwinking human beings that they can reentertheir  
blooms all along. You cheated on your wife at the age of thirty, with a girl hardly be of age, and you felt that you'd gained back all your teenage dreams. However, how horrible it would be if we could literally rewound the gear of time clinging tothis  
kind of behaviors. Why, time is a tyrant, the more we're looking back upon our past, the older we're becoming, the more unquestioning obedience is being demanded from time. In the final analysis, the inanity of rebirth is irreparable, the

idea of reunion is absolute delirium, for man only come to the earth for once. The burden on our shoulders weighs as man spin in the vortex of time, not lightens.

I can't help thinking about Francis these days. But only in the light of my deepest reflections did I see him clearly. He was so called my godfather, who I haven't seen for almost thirty years.

I had been exposed to the story of my grand baptism since I learned to speak. My mother gave birth to me at an improper age with an improper wretch. Everyone would mistake her for my sister, so I became a foundling immediately. Her brother, my false father  
Arthur Kirkland, and Rosa Kirkland hadn't had a baby for years before they adopted me. One year after I came to their family, Matthew came into the world. In my early age, I was sometimes lost in various fancies and conjectures about the thought that  
/what may happen if Matthew was born a year or two earlier. In some way, Matthew saved me as well as Arthur and Rosa did. Anyway, here I am, telling you this story.

Neither of siblings dared to tell my grandparents about me. The night, the night Arthur found me in the trash can, moonlight illuminated my bones. He called Francis at once, who was a little bit of a drunk, coming with a bunch of friends and a bottleof  
stolen holy water. In the bitterly cold midnight, under the halo of artificial Light, I was surrounded by a circle of "Hopeless" (as the mass media called them.). I figured it out that Francis must be a very close friend to Arthur, though I've  
/only heard of him talking about my godfather sporadically, for among all those artists friends of Arthur, Francis, a mere collector, seized the opportunity of being my spiritual prop.

The next morning Arthur tried to contact Emily (my mother),only to find her suicided herself in her apartment.

In sooth, I wondered where I was born. From the age I could retrospect, I was sure I spent all my childhood at the other side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, I talked to Arthur the other day and he sighed, "You were born in London, my dear Alfred. "

We settled down in London in the last two years of Rosa's life. Before that, the Kirklands had never stayed in one particular place for more than three months. In search of the lost times, I was amazed to find that through all those places we'd been to,from  
Los Angeles to New York, Francis had always been around us. It was something like a man's night routinely, Arthur and Francis hung out for a drink on Saturday night, in the meanwhile Rosa taking me and Matthew to the movies. So what kind of powercould  
make a man follow another man tirelessly, and why indeed didn't he came back to London as Arthur did?

I asked Arthur. This time Arthur has got divorced with his forth wife. Poor old miserable man! His marriages couldn't last for more than ten years after Rosa's tragic death. Arthur paused, like he was making the paramount verdict in his life, rising upstrenuously  
and fetched two glasses of black tea.

"Now sit comfortably , boy," he closed his eyes,"we are going to have a long conversation. "

When I was a green hand, he said, I could vaguely sell two paintings a month. Me and Rosa just got married then, both of us crying piteously for food. Francis, the Redeemer, came to me. (In spite of his words, Arthur frowned a little. ) The first timewe  
met in his house, he purchased three pieces of my work. I appreciated it. Moreover, he did had consonance with my paintings. To be a fly in the ointment, Francis was thoroughly naked during the tete-a-tete. I must be rubbing my wedding ring perturbedly.  
/Thirty minutes were gone, and he moped into his bedroom, then out with his exquisite suit. This is not the kind of love I want to give you, Francis crooned. For the next two hours we chatted from Dadaism to Yahoo Kusama, from surrealism to JacksonPollock.  
We were fascinated by the miraculous naissance of empathy that was embraced in this house.

"So he is!" I exclaimed, "After all these years I haven't been cognizant of my godfather's orientation! "

"It's pretty hard to figure it out. He was just being an authentic French. "

When they were out for a drink, they were merely drinking. Francis changed his companion all the time. Four out of five times, his mate dumped Francis, for his being insanely highbrow. Arthur laughed at him all the time, which never put on a fight genuinely.

"He is not the man who would carry the burden of his life begrudgingly, but I have to. Rosa became severally sick, telling me in a solemn tone one day that she would rather be in London."

I recalled that thing. We left as a whirlwind, hadn't have the chance to tell Francis about our departure by a hair's breadth, desperate to turn to London.

"Rosa was devastated to find out that I adored Francis so much. "

"But… "

Arthur suspired, exsufflating all the secrets that he had been hidden from us these years, "I refused to give credence to it at first. But my love, adoration had nothing to do with intercourse. "

I had a young reclusive heart, he said, too solid for anyone to break in. Rosa can't break in, she was too tactful. It was really dubious that a man dealing with cheap thrills unremittingly can acknowledge me.

As I grew older, I lost the ability of twisting fate. I had you two little boys to raise. I was obliged to listen to the public. I wasn't that intrepid.

Arthur beamed, showing all his wrinkles. All that sudden I felt he was getting so senile. With a gust of wind passed by his face, it seemed that it would be weathered and he would vanish.

I got in touch with Francis five days after. His voice was so ancient, as he swallowed sand and it squeezed in his throat. I learned that he has suffered from liver cancer by asking him by beating around the bush.

"It's alright, " Francis seemed relieved and delighted to have someone phoned him, "what about Arthur? "

I told him all I heard in that confab, something like Arthur's numerous divorce and his hastily departure. Francis chortled as a child would do.

"Why, after all these years, if time kept forward, then it ought to wash away all the dust. "

He ceased, as if making up his vital staunchness. And he said, "Can I see him? "

So here I was, accompanied by Arthur, who dressed in his most alluring cloth. Arthur met with Francis in the hospital, the two old imps sneaked out when the nurse was shifting.

They went to Francis's furnished house, Francis tried to carry Arthur but failed. They sat on the floor chuckling. Arthur's heart bounced high.

They danced and danced. And when Francis turned the radio on, he giggled for the second time.

[FIN.]


End file.
